


The Seven

by SassyDragon



Series: Just Us Again Down Here [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: #FicOfAFic, Aborted Undertale Genocide Run, Gen, Go read the original fic or you will be lost, My First Undertale Fanfic, Nonbinary Chara and Frisk, References to Depression, The Empress and the Queen series by Omoni, Undyne is a badass, Voids Are Weird, frisk is depressed, the six souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9399791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SassyDragon/pseuds/SassyDragon
Summary: What the souls were up to while Undyne was busy absorbing them.Based on the first few chapters of the wonderful The Undying Empress by the wonderful Omoni.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Omoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omoni/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Undying Empress](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610184) by [Omoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omoni/pseuds/Omoni). 



Darkness.

Silence.

That was it. That was all there was here. For a moment, Frisk wondered whether they had gone blind and deaf, along with being dead and having their soul stolen. Then they looked down at where their body should have been, and was surprised to discover that it was still there- well, sort of. The scarlet outline of their body was there, along with a glowing red heart in the middle of their chest, but the rest was transparent. Or black. Hard to tell in this place.

Frisk was confused, and starting to get scared again, so they did what they always did when they were confused and scared: asked Chara for advice. Except that this time, something was different. Usually Chara would answer immediately, in a sweet little girlish voice (despite being nonbinary) that nonetheless burned itself into Frisk's brain like stark crimson lettering on a blank black canvas, but now they didn't. They didn't answer immediately. They didn't answer at all. And now, come to think of it, Chara's presence was gone too, that ever-growing place in the back of Frisk's head that they could retreat to whenever they needed to distance themself from the pleas for mercy, the dust on their hands and clothes, the blood on the edge of the knife. Now there was only Frisk, and the memories.

"Ch-Chara?" Frisk said aloud, but there was no reply, only the faintest of echoes.

The faces came, as they always did when Frisk was truly alone, with not even Chara for company. Suddenly Frisk was back in the Ruins corridor, gazing into Toriel's eyes as she fell, dying, to her knees, seeing an infinite sadness there, the sadness of a mother who knows she has failed her child. They were somewhere else in the Ruins, didn't matter where, watching with a kind of displaced horror as a nameless Whimsun dissolved into dust before its body - sliced clean in half - even hit the ground. They were in Snowdin, at the crossroads with the first dimensional box, cracking first an Ice Cap's hat and then its skull.

Snowdrake had only got half a pun out before he was killed. Woshua had run straight into the knife, wanting only to wash it clean of blood and dust. Temmie, with her final breath, had wheezed out something about never being able to go to college. Papyrus - oh, Papyrus, loyal, optimistic, gullible Papyrus - that had been the worst. He had offered them mercy, spread out his hands to them, trusting that they would not raise their weapon again, and they had rewarded that trust with death.

They'd hid with Chara for hours after that.

The faces came, as mercilessly as Frisk had killed them. Froggit, Moldsmal, Dogamy and Dogaressa, Aaron, Jerry Migosp Vegetoid, Grillby, Greater Dog, Lesser Dog Moldbygg Doggo Shyren Napstablook Glad Dummy Onion-san Toriel again, _"oh my child, you are stronger than I thought--"_

Frisk curled themself into a tiny, miserable ball, and wept.

\---

As soon as Jaden hit the "floor" - he called it a floor for lack of a better word, it was just some part of the void that souls happened to be able to stand on - he sprang back to his feet, fists in front of his face, boxer's defensive stance. He didn't really know what had just happened, but he had a pretty good idea: that fish monster, the one with the sharp teeth and the smoldering eyepatch and the cut-up armor, had just absorbed him.

Jaden had been minding his own business, trying not to go insane in his own little pocket of hell where nothing ever happened ever, when suddenly he'd felt himself being dragged upward by a force or forces unknown. He'd tried to punch whatever it was, of course, but his gloves connected with nothing, and within a moment he was floating above the fish lady's blue-scaled hand, staring into her one unusually bright eye, before she brought him to her chest and the world vanished and he was falling, falling into...this place.

Another void. Just wonderful.

And then Jaden realized that no, this void wasn't quite empty, like his had been. About a hundred yards away (if distance worked normally in the void, which he was pretty sure it didn't) was a spark of bright red. Jaden ran toward it; sure enough, almost as soon as he expressed the desire to get to the red thing, he was barely far enough away from it to stop in time. "Hey!" he shouted as he skidded to a halt beside what, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a child-soul like him, except that instead of tangerine orange, the newcomer's outline and soul were scarlet. Their head jerked up at the sound of his voice. He could see they'd been crying. "Y-you...you're not Chara?" the other soul asked, their voice shaky and soft.

What? "Who the heck is Chara? My name's Jaden. What's yours?"

The other soul buried their tear-streaked face in their arms again.

Well, that was just rude. Here was the first other human he'd seen in years - it had to be years, right? It had certainly felt like years - and they wouldn't even talk to him?! "I said, who the heck is Chara?" he asked again, frustration lending an edge to his voice.

"Chara is my best friend." The other soul's voice was muffled, hardly audible.

"Wait, you have a best friend? You've been around other people?!"

The soul's face snapped up again, looking incensed. "I was alive half an hour ago! Of course I've been around other people! What's your problem with...with..." They trailed off, looking horrorstruck, then launched themself at Jaden and started sobbing into his shoulder, "sorry" the only coherent word.

Jaden only just managed to stop himself from punching the soul in the stomach out of reflex. Instead he put one arm awkwardly around their shoulders. Whatever they were crying so hard about, they obviously just needed to let it out. They'd be alright soon, and then he could bombard them with questions about what the world outside was like.

\---

This wasn't fair, Myka thought as she sat on the void-ground, rubbing at the outline of her knee that she knew wasn't bruised but felt like it was anyway. This wasn't fair at all.

The void had given her a lot of time to think about her situation, and so far what she'd come up with was that yeah, the monsters had been dealt a terrible injustice when they were sealed underground, but that didn't mean she deserved to be stuck in some extradimensional limbo for eternity. Sure, she was human, but she hadn't been responsible for the barrier!

...Had she? Did simply being human mean she deserved to die for what others of her race had done?

Myka shook her head roughly, almost making her cowgirl hat fly off. She couldn't afford to think that way. She'd go mad with depression if she did.

She got up, looked around just in case- and froze, because over there the blackness was broken by two points of light, one red, one orange, so close to each other they were almost indistinguishable. Cautiously, so as not to make any noise, she loaded her pistol with the lemon drops she always used instead of bullets - it never hurt to be too careful - then made for the lights at a brisk jog.

They must've been closer than she thought, because almost as soon as she'd started running they were beside her. A soul-boy, the orange light she'd seen, comforted the red light, a soul-child crying into the outline of the boy's shoulder. Red didn't look up when Myka approached, but Orange did, and gaped.

"Another one? The heck is happening today?!"

Myka shifted into what she liked to call her sassy pose, both hands on her hips and her head tilted just so. "I could ask you the same thing, partner. Whoever heard of more than one soul in the same void?"

"I sure didn't." Orange shifted so he could look at Myka better. "Name's Jaden. You?"

"Myka. Pleasure meetin' you and all that. Who's your friend?"

Jaden opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped, his brow furrowing. "Y'know, they never actually told me. Hey, you, Chara's friend, what's your name?"

They mumbled something, too quietly to catch. Jaden leaned closer. "What was that?"

"Frisk. My n-name is Frisk."

"Well then, pleasure meetin' you too, Frisk. How'd you-"

Frisk's head snapped up out of Jaden's T-shirt, so quickly Myka was surprised they didn't crack their neck. "It's not a pleasure. I'm a-a murderer, I- don't say that! Don't ever say that!" They burst into tears again.

Myka frowned, going down on one knee to get a closer look at Frisk. "What the devil is that supposed to mean? You're a murderer? Like hell you are- what happened?!"

\---

The first thing Thomas saw when he dropped into the void was the other three sparks. One red, one orange, one yellow, all the brightest thing - indeed, the only thing of any sort, bright or no - within view. Thomas' heart leapt. Those had to be other souls. And if they were other souls, that meant they were other people, and if there were other people, that meant he might finally be able to help someone again-!

For a moment, Thomas simply stood there, stunned, unable to believe his amazing luck. Then he hefted his frying pan, tried for the umpteenth time to wipe the grease stains off his apron (for the umpteenth time, it didn't work), and sprinted for the sparks.

He was there within moments, even though he was a slow runner and always had been. One of the other souls, the red one, was sobbing hard. This wouldn't do at all. Thomas fell to his knees beside the red soul, tossed down his pan (it vanished, but he knew he'd be able to call it back later), and gathered the crying soul into as warm and comforting a hug as the green outlines of his arms could manage.

The soul stiffened. Before Thomas quite knew what was happening, they'd shoved him away, clawing at his arms until he let them go. Both Thomas and the soul fell over backwards. Thomas pushed himself back into a sitting position. The soul did not.

"I'm sorry-" Thomas immediately tried to say, but the yellow soul, a girl who looked like something out of an old Western, cut him off. "Nah, it's fine. You didn't know. None of us did. Weird, they were letting Jaden hug them a moment ago..."

"Yeah," replied the orange soul, Jaden evidently, scratching his head with one boxing-gloved hand. "Weird. Frisk? You okay?"

"No, clearly not," Thomas said, concerned. "Maybe I went too quickly. Frisk, that's your name, isn't it? Do you have anything you'd like to talk about?"

Frisk just cried harder, curling up in fetal position on the floor, or whatever it was.

"Fine, be that way," Jaden said. "What did you say your name was?"

"Thomas," said Thomas. "Who's the girl?"

"That's Myka, and you already guessed the crybaby is Frisk."

"They're not a crybaby," Myka said, a little sharply. "When I told 'em it was nice meeting 'em, they said somethin' 'bout bein' a murderer or crap. I think this might have somethin' to do with that."

"A murderer? They look so sad- why would they kill?"

Myka shrugged. "No idea. Maybe it was monsters- like me, I fought 'em as long as they fought me, but they always quit trying to fight before one of us ended up dead, so I quit too. Never killed anyone. Maybe Frisk just...went one step further, y'know? If one of 'em got on their nerves?"

"No." A voice, somehow hollow-sounding, made Thomas jump in surprise. Frisk was sitting up, looking at the ground with a face like they'd given up on the world. "It was everyone. I killed...I killed everyone. Until Undyne killed me."

\---

Ellie lay on the ground, watching and waiting. That was the number-one rule of hide-and-seek: watch, wait, don't move unless your spot is awful and the seeker's already gone by. Voids, in her experience, made really good hiding places, except that the scary fish woman had finally found her, so maybe not. She had to be a monster. The scary fish woman was closer to what Ellie thought of as a "monster" than any other monster, especially Toriel, the nice goat lady who saved her from the creepy flower Flowey and made her pie and let her have a sleepover, as if she had anywhere else to sleep when she'd just fallen down a hole in a mountain.

In any case, hide-and-seek was over now, unless there was anything else to hide from in this new void, which Ellie didn't think there was. She checked all around her. No flower with "friendliness pellets" that hurt like losing a friend, no nice goat lady, no weird frogs or weird bugs or really weird carrot things that threw vegetables and stuff.

But there were four other kids, just like her but other colors instead of light blue.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free," Ellie whispered to herself, just to make sure the game was really over. Then she got up and ran over to the kids.

The orange boxer, the yellow cowgirl, and the green cook were staring at the red one, who just looked ordinary and sad. The red one said something all quiet, which made the cook and the boxer jump and the cowgirl say "Whoa nelly, what was that?!"

Ellie wasn't sure how to respond. Did this mean they wanted to play with her, or didn't it? Fortunately, she was saved from having to answer by the cook noticing her, doing a double take, and saying, "Hello there. Who are you?"

"I'm Ellie. Who are you?"

"I'm Thomas, and this is Myka, Jaden, and Frisk. I'm assuming you got absorbed by that warrior fish monster too?"

"Y-yeah."

Frisk, the sad red one, was looking at her. They'd fallen silent, like the sight of her meant they didn't want to go on talking. Ellie moved a step closer, shyly.

"You look like you need a friend. Do you want to be friends with me?"

Frisk opened and closed their mouth, like they couldn't believe what they were hearing. Finally they said, "I- I'm s-sorry. Y-you don't want to be friends with me. You don't."

"But I do want to be friends with you! You're the first person I've seen in...in forever!"

"Unless you're Chara, I don't n-need a friend. I d-don't deserve more than one f-friend, anyway."

"But don't you have three friends right here?"

Frisk looked stunned. Jaden the boxer looked confused. Thomas looked...proud of Ellie? It was hard to tell. Myka the cowgirl, on the other hand, had her eyes narrowed at Frisk.

Ellie froze. Sometimes if you stayed still enough, they wouldn't notice you, or would think you were too small and weak to bother hurting.

"That's what I'm tryin' to figure out," Myka said. "Are we your friends or aren't we, Frisk?"

Frisk glared up at Myka through a fresh wave of tears. "I j-just told you. I don't deserve friends. N-now leave me alone before any of you get hurt."

What was that supposed to mean? Little kids didn't hurt little kids, only big kids and grown-ups and monsters did that! "Wh-what? Why do you think we'll get hurt?"

"Because I'm a murderer, okay?!" Frisk exploded. "I killed Toriel. I killed Papyrus. I almost killed this tiny dinosaur kid with no arms- I would have, if Undyne hadn't taken the blow. I nearly killed her, even. And then she killed me." Frisk took a deep, shaky breath. "Chara helped me do it. They gave me the knife, showed me how every k-kill made me stronger, gave me advice, let me step away from it all when...when the memories, of everyone begging me to spare them, when they got to be too much. But the actual killing? That was me. That was me, swinging the knife, making the choice. Every single time."

Ellie and the others stared at Frisk in shock. To Ellie, it was a contradiction: little kids didn't hurt people. They didn't. It wasn't possible. So Frisk had to be lying.

But little kids only lied by saying they hadn't done things when they actually had. So was this really a lie at all?

Ellie was scared. She wanted nothing more than to run away, back to her mother, not back to her father because he hit even worse than the weird carrot things, but her mother was somewhere up above and besides, she knew the number-one rule of hide-and-seek: watch and wait. Don't judge a situation too early.

So Ellie waited. She wouldn't judge Frisk until she was absolutely sure, one way or the other.

\---

Keisha turned her headlong fall into a jeté, only it wasn't a very good one because jetés didn't usually involve dropping a good five or six feet into a featureless void where the floor could've been anywhere. She landed too hard, felt her ankle twist, and went down in the dark blue outline of a heap.

"Ow," she said. Then she swore a couple times in French, just because she could, and got up. She'd twisted her outline of an ankle like this more times than she could count, and it never hurt for more than a couple seconds. This time was no different.

Keisha brushed imaginary dust off her tutu and looked around. There was a cluster of lights in the distance, looking like the beginning of a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue except a lighter blue than Keisha. Except for that brief dizzying moment when the fish woman had picked her up and out of the void, they were the first colors, save her own blue, that Keisha had seen in a very, very long time.

She did another jeté, a pas de chat, and three pirouettes for joy. Then she ran over to the five lights, a little awkwardly owing to her pointe shoes. The moment she reached them, she could tell something big had just happened: one of them, the one who was red the same way Keisha was dark blue, was sitting on the ground crying, and the other four were looking at them like they had two heads. "Uh...is everything alright?" Keisha asked, of no one in particular.

The yellow one, the closest to Keisha, whirled around with a gasp, and before Keisha could blink she was looking down the barrel of a pistol. Keisha jumped backward, hands in the air. She opened her mouth to suggest a truce, but before she could say anything the green one leapt between her and the gun, his frying pan - had that been there before? - held protectively in front of both himself and Keisha. "Watch it, Myka!" he snapped. "It's just another soul!"

The yellow one - Myka, apparently - blinked, then holstered her gun and held out a hand for Keisha to shake. "Heh, sorry 'bout that. You startled me. Old habits die hard, y'know?"

Keisha knew. Things jumped out at you in Snowdin, more so than in the Ruins where everyone knew you were under Toriel's protection and wouldn't dare give you anything but a fair fight. She hadn't made it far through Snowdin, but she'd made it far enough that if anything startled her, she would like as not kick it in the head out of reflex. She shook Myka's hand.

"So what's all this?" she asked the assembled souls, who had all by now noticed her.

The green one shuffled his feet. "Erm, nothing. We were...having a discussion with Frisk. About what the outside's like?"

BS. "That's not true and you know it," Keisha shot back.

"I'm serious! We were just talking with Frisk-"

"-about how I'm a murderous fiend who doesn't deserve any of you," said the red one from the floor.

Also BS. "Murderous fiend? Please. You're a sad, scared kid, nothing more or less. And you're stuck with us, for the time being anyway, so it doesn't matter whether you deserve us or not."

That shut Red up pretty quick. Orange said something under his breath that might've been "Dang," but it was hard to tell.

"And I thought I was the sassy one," Myka said from behind Keisha. She actually sounded impressed.

"That wasn't sass. I'm just telling things how they are."

"Which is exactly what I would've done," Green broke in, "if I thought it would've helped matters!"

"Oh, stuff it, pushover," Orange said.

Green scowled. "I am not a pushover."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Are too!"

"Am- oh, this is silly. Frisk, do you have any idea- Frisk? Where'd Frisk go?!"

Keisha looked down in surprise. Sure enough, where Frisk had been sitting a moment before, now there was only darkness.

\---

Peter tumbled into the void. He tried to do one of those cool tuck-and-roll things like anime characters always did when they fell, but he got stuck halfway through the somersault and ended up flat on his back, glasses askew. He was lucky they weren't broken, really. And then again, those glasses had taken worse hits due to his clumsiness alone, and the hinges weren't even loose...

He had all sorts of theories about how the void behaved. His body, or violet outline of a body, for one: he suspected it was just a projection, something his soul made for him because it wasn't used to just being a soul and not having a body attached. It wasn't his actual body, just a representation of his body the way he remembered it, which was why he couldn't seem to hurt himself or his clothes in any way. His glasses weren't broken in the memory, therefore they couldn't be broken here.

When he caught sight of the other souls, all the theories vanished from his head in an instant.

They seemed to be in two groups: orange, yellow, green, and two blues to his left, and a red by itself to his right. Judging by the faint sounds from either side, the five on the left were having an argument, and the one on the right was crying. Great, now he wanted to help, apart from being curious. Peter ran over to the lonely red soul, debating calling out but ultimately deciding against it, especially when it took far less time to reach the red soul than he had expected.

"Hey," he said quietly, crouching beside the kid. "Are you okay?"

A muffled reply. It might have been "No, leave me alone."

Peter drew back. "Well, alright, if that's what you want," he said. "I know how you feel. I mean," he amended hastily, catching himself, "I probably don't know how you feel, you look like whatever happened that it was awful, I mean, I know how you feel wanting to be alone when I'm sad. Uh...y'know?"

No response. Not even a change in the volume of crying, which was presently very quiet.

Peter sat down a couple feet from the kid. "If you need anything, just tell me, okay?" Again, no response. Peter sighed, pulled out his notebook, and opened to the last written-in page, about three-quarters through. That was another funny thing: it had been three-quarters full when he died in Waterfall, yet he'd been writing in it for what felt like years - it was the only pastime he had in the void - and it was still just that. Three-quarters full. It must've grown about two hundred extra pages, that only seemed to exist when he went looking for them.

He'd been in the middle of a sentence when Undyne had absorbed him. He finished it and was about to start another when running footsteps from behind him made him turn around. The green kid, a boy a good deal taller than Peter carrying a frying pan, skidded to a stop beside Peter and the red kid, who was still crying.

"How long have they been here?" the green boy demanded of Peter.

"Dunno," Peter answered with a shrug. "I just got here."

That seemed to calm him a bit. He knelt down beside the red kid, placed his pan on the ground where it vanished (aha, summonable object, Peter thought), and put a tentative hand on the red child's shoulder. They flinched, but didn't jump away.

"So, great, we found Frisk," said the next one on the scene, an orange boy about Peter's height but who somehow acted taller than he was. "And who're you?" "Peter. People sometimes call me Professor Plum, though, like from Clue, because I suppose I remind them of him a bit...?"

"Makes sense," said the sapphire blue girl in a ballet outfit. "Given you're purple and all."

"I wasn't purple when I was alive! At least I don't think I was..."

"Well, whatever about that," said the tallest of the group, a cowgirl in yellow. "I'm Myka, and this is Keisha-" the ballerina waved- "Jaden-" "'Sup," said the orange boy- "Ellie-" the other girl, lighter blue and very short with a ribbon in her hair, gave a shy smile- "and you already know Thomas and Frisk."

"N-nice to meet you." Peter wracked his brains for something else to say- why, oh why was he always so awkward?! "We're..." He laughed nervously. "We're kind of a rainbow here, huh? Do you think it's just us seven, or will there be more?"

"Seven..." Myka frowned. "Y'know, come to think of it, I think I remember something about seven souls. Something the monsters used to say, something about their king..."

"Asgore," Thomas blurted out, from his position on the ground comforting Frisk. "The king of the monsters is called Asgore, and I remember that too. I was trying not to get killed by the Captain of the Guard, Erias the Greatsword I think he was called- I don't quite remember, but his sword was huge in any case. Anyway, Erias told me King Asgore wanted seven human souls so he could..."

If Thomas hadn't been transparent and green, Peter was sure all the color would just have drained from his face. "...Oh no. Oh no, oh no, he wanted the souls so he could...'become a god' was how Erias put it, and break the barrier..."

"...But we're not inside Asgore, are we?" Keisha asked.

"N-no," Peter gulped. "We're not."

\---

Frisk couldn't believe any of this was happening. How anyone could stand to be around them after everything they'd done was beyond them, yet here the other souls were. Thomas was even letting them cry into the front of his apron. It was surreal, almost, how an afterlife that should have been torture...wasn't.

They half-listened to the others' conversation about souls, Kings, and some monster guy with a huge sword, letting their tears run dry while inside, their mind was a whirl. They pondered their situation from every angle they could think of, and it always came out to the same thing: Frisk owed Undyne a debt they could never repay. All the friends of Undyne's that Frisk had killed could never come back. Frisk could never give enough recompense for their lives, and for the lives of the monsters Undyne had saved by ending Frisk's murderous rampage.

So what could they do? They couldn't RESET, nor could they take their own life without magic- they'd tried both those things already.

What could they do?

A sound came, like rushing wind, and then without warning the void in front of Frisk shattered in a blast of color. It was like they were watching a movie in a theater, except that the screen was wider and the picture clearer than anything Frisk had ever laid eyes on. They saw a flight of stairs, saw the picture walk up them- no, Frisk realized. It wasn't like watching a movie. It was like seeing through someone else's eyes.

Around them, the other six were rooted to the spot, mouths open and eyes wide. All seven souls stared, transfixed, as the picture - Undyne's viewpoint, Frisk guessed - came to what looked like an enormous subway tunnel, stretching away into infinity. It flashed with light every so often. It looked like an inevitability, like you could walk down it forever and still be right where you started from.

"Is this the barrier?" Peter whispered.

Quite suddenly, Frisk was no longer alone in their head. It was like Chara, and yet nothing like Chara: Chara had grown, slowly, while this was just...there, when it hadn't been a second before. While Chara never forced Frisk to do anything, only made suggestions, this new presence clearly had a goal in mind. And while Chara had always spoken in words, this went deeper somehow. Frisk heard nothing, but the point was made anyway. They were in no doubt that this new presence wanted Frisk to help it break the barrier.

Around Frisk, the others reacted, likely to a similar experience. "What the flip?!" Jaden exclaimed. Thomas and Keisha clutched their heads in surprise. Ellie stood stock-still, looking petrified, her lips moving silently. Myka had her gun out again, wheeling around, looking for a source of the strangeness in her mind and finding nothing. Of them all, Peter looked the most level-headed. "Lemme think, okay?" he whispered aloud, then crawled over to Frisk.

"You feel that?" he asked them. They nodded. "Any idea what it is?"

"I think it's Undyne," Frisk managed to get out. The presence's insistent command was making it hard to think about anything but the barrier. "I think she's trying to...use us."

"Use us?"

"You know. Use the seven souls. Use our power."

"That would..." Peter grimaced for a moment, grasping at his own temple in an effort to regain control of himself. "That would make sense, yes."

"Hang on, I'm gonna try something. I've had other people in my head before - don't ask - so I might be able to figure this out." Frisk closed their eyes and poked cautiously at the other presence. It didn't respond, but Frisk got a feel for what it was like: water and strength, spears and selflessness, courage, love, and an odd flicker of determination. "Yeah, that's definitely Undyne. I don't think she can feel us, though, like the thinking parts of us. Just our power."

"So," Myka broke in through gritted teeth, as she and the others sat down beside Frisk and Peter. "Undyne, or whoever she is as absorbed us, is in our heads. Should we do it?" Nobody needed to ask what "it" was.

"Yes," said Peter.

"Yes," said Ellie.

"No," said Jaden, hotly.

Thomas turned to him with an exasperated look. "And why not? The monsters have been trapped down here for...well, for who knows how long! What's even the point of us being stuck in a void, if not to do this one thing?!"

"Well, the way I see it," Jaden retorted, "we don't owe them anything! They flipping killed us! You can't honestly say that's not-"

Something hit Frisk then, a memory, for once not of someone dead at their hand, but of something their dad had said before he and their mom died. They'd lived in a tough neighborhood even then, and when Frisk had come home in tears with bruises on their face and stomach from where a couple older boys had hit them around, their dad had bandaged it all up without a word of complaint. And when Frisk had asked why, even though they'd tried their best not to get hit, it had happened anyway, he'd said, _Sometimes you can't do it. And that's okay. Just do what you can._

They couldn't ever make it up to Undyne for the atrocities they'd committed. That was okay. They'd do what they could, starting here, starting now.

"Yes," Frisk said, both aloud to the others and in their thoughts to Undyne. "Jaden, stop thinking like that. I'm going to break the barrier. I, as the killer of her friends, owe it to her. We all, as humans, owe it to monsterkind. Who cares what we deserve? The monsters deserve freedom, and I'm giving it to them. _Are you with me?"_

Frisk knew, by the silence and the surge of power that filled Undyne's presence in their mind, that the answer was yes.

Behind them, Jaden raised his gloved fists. Myka raised her gun. Thomas raised his frying pan, ready to swing. Ellie held her knife - small and blunt, the blade made of weak plastic, a harmless toy - out in front of her, defiant. Keisha looked ready to kick something, Peter to whack something with his notebook or stab it with his pen.

Frisk took a deep breath and held their hands out in front of them. A crimson knife slid into existence, longer and much sharper than Ellie's, very, very real. Frisk dropped into a fighting stance, force of habit pushing their knife into the position they always used when aiming a strike.

The barrier loomed in front of them, an easy target. It would be simple, so much simpler than killing a monster. With monsters, timing was everything, the moment to strike elusive and brief; here, where time worked strangely anyhow, the moment was eternal.

_Let's do this._

Frisk took another deep breath, and let the knife-slash fly.


End file.
